With the standardization of cameras in smartphones, consumers are taking more pictures and videos than ever before. It is not uncommon for consumers to have hundreds or thousands of photos stored on their mobile devices. These photos are sometimes backed up to a cloud storage service, but in many cases the photos remain stored on the mobile device. Users may choose not to backup their photos to the cloud due to the cost associated with using a cloud storage service, high cost of broadband access, lack of broadband connectivity, or other factors.
Users that search for a specific photo or set of photos generally have to manually sift through their images until they find the specific photo or set of photos. There may be no quick way to search for a photo stored in the cloud or on the phone using search terms. Media search engines that employ natural language processing techniques may fail to find the specific photo or set of photos since there may be high variability in the words different users might employ to describe certain features or characteristics in a photo.